The Endless Scourge

"Achtung . . . Achtung . . . Achtung. . . ." The bleak warning rolled endlessly from German loudspeakers as the Allied air offensive rolled endlessly on against German oil and transport.

One day last week 1,250 U.S. heavies, escorted by 1,000 fighters, bombed four synthetic oil plants in the Leipzig area. Only a dozen German fighters were seen, and four of these were shot down; but the flak was the thickest and deadliest that U.S. crews had ever encountered. "Flak burst in a mass," said one radioman, "a forest of it so dense that we could only get occasional glimpses of the formations ahead of us. It was a solid wall at the target."

The Nazis were said to have stripped the ack-ack guns from ruined cities, e.g., Berlin, to reinforce the oil sites. In any event, Leipzig was more viciously defended from the ground than Berlin had ever been. Eighty-six U.S. planes failed to get back to their bases. Some landed safely elsewhere, but at week's end 40 bombers and 13 fighters were still missing.

Meanwhile the R.A.F. was meat-axing Cologne, Duisburg, Essen, Freiburg, Neuss and other rail centers feeding the West Wall. Some 270 Lancasters unloaded six-ton "factory-busters" on Munich, first German city to feel their blast.

Occasionally the Luftwaffe chose to fight. When 500 U.S. fighters swept down on northwest Germany to strafe transport, 400 interceptors rose to challenge. They lost 98 in the air and four more trying to take off, against a U.S. loss of only 13.

The Germans were showing amazing toughness and recuperative power under the endless air scourge of Allied planes from Britain and Italy. They took a loss of over 700 fighters in November, but their dispersed and hidden assembly plants were more than able to replace it. In October the Reich had shuddered under the second heaviest bomb tonnage of the war,* but its oil production had crept up (according to Allied intelligence) from 23% to 30% of 1943 capacity.

There were few air enthusiasts in the Allied camp who still believed that the air campaign would win the war. Yet even the non-enthusiasts could see that it was an indispensable part of the overall pressure on Festung Deutschland.

*Heaviest was November, with 114,700 tons.

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